BELLEY
415
BELLEY
Dright prospects for the future. The diocese has
100 secular and two regular priests; eighty-two
- hurches with resident priests; thirty-two missions
ivith churches; eighteen chapels; twenty-four eccle- iastical students; a high school for boys; two acade- iiies for yoimg ladies; sixty-seven parochial schools with 5,033 pupils; an orphan asylum with 112 orphans; eight hospitals; and a house for the aged, rhe following religious communities are repre- sented in the diocese: Brothers of Mary, Sisters of Christian Charity, Sisters of St. Dominic, Franciscan Sisters, Hospital Sisters of St. Francis, School Sisters of St. Francis, Sisters of the Poor Handmaids of Christ, Sisters of the Holy Cross, Sisters of St. Joseph, PoUsh Sisters of St. Joseph, Sisters of Lo- retto. School Sisters of Xotre Dame, Sisters of the Precious Blood, Servants of Man.', UrsuUne Sisters, and White Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Olive.
To this diocese belong some of the oldest missions of the West. The records of the church of Kas- kaskia date from the year 1695 and give the name of the Rev. Jac. Gravier, S.J., as the missionary priest. The Jesuits continued to attend to the wants of the Indian tribe of the Kaskaskias and of the French, and alternately the Jesuit Fathers De Beaubois, Le Boullenger, Tartariu, Aubert, and Meurin had this terrltorj- as the field of their apos- tolic labours. Father Meurin was the last Jesuit doing missionarj- work at Kaskaskia; the order was suppressed in his time. He died at Prairie du Rocher and is buried at Florissant, Missouri. The Rev. P. Gibault who in 176S came from Quebec was the first secular priest, who as resident pastor of Kaskaskia had charge also of the large surrounding territorj', and who became Wear-general of the territorj' of Illinois. He continued liis arduous labours' until 1791. the time of his death. Until 1S20 the Lazarist Fathers were in this field; after that the work was continued by secular priests. The old town of Kaskaskia, \\ith its statehouse and church, has been swallowed up by the Mississippi River and about two miles farther inland a new town and a new chiu-ch have been built up.
The organization of the congregation of Prairie du Rocher coincides with the buUding of the first Fort Chartres on the banks of the Mississippi in 1720. The Rev. J. Le Boullenger, chaplain of the militia stationed at the Fort, was placed in charge of the congregation. The church, built by the people, was placed under the protection of St. Anne. In 1743 the Rev. J. Gagnon, S.J., took charge of the mission and laboured there until his death in 1755. His remains were interred by the side of the altar in the chapel in the cemeterj". This chapel was built in 1734, and placed under the patronage of St. Joseph. When the river inundated one comer of the newly built stone structure at Fort Chartres and threatened the village and St. Aime's church, the Fort was evacuated, the \Tllage deserted; its inhabitants sought the high ground at the foot of the bluffs, and the cemeterj- chapel became the parish church and served as such until 1858, when a brick church was erected. Among the missionaries who worked there, the names of Gabriel Richard (later Delegate to Congress from Michigan); Doutien Ohvier (who lived to be ninety-five years of age); Xa\ ier Dahmen, and John Timon (later Bishop of Buffalo, New York) deserve special mention. The early records of the old church of Cahokia have been lost, and accurate data can be found from the year 1783 only. At that time the religious wants of the Catholics of Cahokia and the surrounding territorj', including Sc. Louis across the river, were attended to by Father De Saintpierre. When in 1843 the Diocese of Chicago was erected, Cahokia, Prairie du Long. BelleWlle, Shoal Creek (now Ger- mantown), Kaskaskia, Prairie du Rocher, and Shaw-
neetown were the only parishes in the territory
now comprised by the Diocese of Belle\-ille.
She.*, Hisl. of Cath. Ch. in U. S. (New York. 1904); Hit- siones CaUwlicoe (Propaganda, Rome, 1907). 539.
H. J. Hagen.
Belley (Beluctctm), Diocese of, coextensive ■nith the civil department of Ain and a suffragan of the Archbisliopric of Besan^on. Although sup- pressed at the time of the Concordat, the Diocese of Belley was re-established in 1822 and took from the Archdiocese of Lyons the arrondissements of Belley, Bourg. Xantua, and Trevoux. and from the Arch- diocese of Chambery the arrondissement of Gex.
Local tradition maintains that Belley was evan- gelized in the second centurj- by the rQarti,-rs Mar- ceilus and Valerian, companions of St. Pothinus. The first bishop of historic certainty is Vincentius, mentioned in 552. Others who occupied the see were St. Hippolj-tus, Abbot of Condat (eighth cen- tiuy); St. .\nthelm (1163-78), seventh" General of the Carthusian Order; St. .\rthaud (1179-90), foimder of the Carthusians at Ar\neres; Camus (1609-29), a noted preacher and romancist; and Monseigneur Francois M. Richard (1872-75), later Cardinal and Archbishop of Paris. Belley honours in a special manner St. Amandus. Bishop of Maastricht, who founded the Abbey of Xantua about 660; St. Vulbas, a patrician of Bourgogne and a war companion of King Dagobert, treacherously as- sassinated in 642; St. Rambert, killed by order of Ebroin in the seventh century, whose name has been given to a city of the diocese; St. Trivier, the solitarj'. who died about 650; St. Barnard (ninth centurj'), who founded the great Benedictine Abbey of Ambronay and died Archbishop of Vienna; St. Lambert (twelfth centurj'), foimder of the Cistercian Abbey at Chezerj'; St. Roland (twelfth centurj'), Abbot of Chezerj'; St. Stephen of Chatillon. who founded the Carthusian monasterj' at Portes, in 1115, and died Bishop of Die; St. Stephen of Bourg, who foimded the Carthusian monastery at MejTia in 1116; and St. Jean-Baptiste Vianney (1786-1857), parish priest at Ars.
The Diocese of Bellej' which, in the Middle Ages, had no less than eight Carthusian monasteries, was the birthplace of the Jos^phistes, a congregation founded Dj' Jacques Cretenet (1606-67), a lay- man and surgeon who became a priest after the death of his wife; of the teaching order of the Sisters of St. Charles, founded bj- Charles Demia of Bourg (1636-89); and of three teaching orders founded in the first half of the nineteenth centurj': the Brothers of the Societj' of the Cross of Jesus; the Brothers of the Holj' Familj' of Bellej', and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Bourg. In 1858 a Trappist monastery was established in the unhealthj' Dombes district. Cardinal Louis Aleman (1390-1450) and Sceur RosaUe (1787-1856), noted in the historj' of modern Parisian charities, were both natives of the Diocese of Bellej'. Blessed Pierre-Louis-Marie Chanel was bom at CMet near Bourg. For thirty years of its existence (1701-31), Le JoiU'nal de Trevoux", a valuable repertory of the literarj- and religious historj' of the period, was published bj' the Jesuits at Trevoux, in this diocese. The church at Brou, near Bourg, is a marvel of architecture and contains some wonderful pieces of sculpture. It was built between 1511 and 1536 under the direction of Mar- garet of Austria, widow of Philibert (II) the Fair, Duke of Savoy.
The latest statistics for the diocese give the fol- lowing institutions: 1 maternity hospital, 66 infant schools, 1 deaf-mute institute, 3 boj's' orphanages, 10 girls' orphanages, 21 hospitals, or hospices. 2 dis- pensaries, 21 communities for the care of the sick in their homes. 1 home for incurables, and 5 homes for the aged, all conducted by sisters; and 1 deaf-
